Computer programming is typically a process of program generation, editing, debugging, and analysis of editing effects. Typically, editing involves numerous stages of adding, removing, or changing code—and analyzing the effects of each editing stage. The iterative nature of program editing commonly makes it a time consuming and tiring process.
Digital video is a growing application. Programmers working in digital video are commonly called upon to develop programs that affect video data. For example, compression of video data is an approach that has been used to make digital video images more transportable. Digital video compression schemes allow digitized video frames to be represented digitally in a much more efficient manner. Digital video programmers are thus frequently called upon to generate, edit, debug, and analyze code for wide variety of purposes in the areas of digital video encoding, transcoding, and decoding.
Current programmers working in MPEG video compression rely on output video as a mechanism for program analysis. Since conventional decoders do not produce any information other than raw video, this type of analysis restricts a programmer to qualitative visual feedback of program efficacy. As editing may produce minor changes in output video outside a person's visual detection capabilities, raw video viewing may not be suitable in many cases. Some programmers output raw data, e.g. a large amount of numbers, to assist in analysis. This typically requires a programmer to wastefully print out large arrays of numbers. Given the large amount of information in a single video frame, and that a single line of code may process many frames at a single time, printing out large arrays of numbers is not a proficient manner of program efficacy detection. For example, it is often hard for a programmer to pinpoint a bug within these large arrays.
In view of the foregoing, an improved mechanism for video programming analysis would be highly beneficial.